Unfinished Business Podcast Episode 4 Part 2: Real Followers, Clear Boundaries and Better Workplace Conversations
In Part 2 of Unfinished Business Episode 4, Anaita Sarkar and Tim Duggan respond to two real founder dilemmas: an Instagram account overwhelmed by fake followers and a flexible team that stopped showing up for important meetings. Their advice connects audience growth and workplace leadership through one principle: replace appearances and avoidance with clarity, relevance and honest conversations.
One of the biggest challenges for business owners is learning the difference between what looks good and what actually works.
In the latest Reality Check segment of Unfinished Business, host Anaita Sarkar and entrepreneur, author and former Junkee Media co-founder Tim Duggan tackle two listener dilemmas that share a common cause.
One founder is trapped behind thousands of fake Instagram followers. Another is struggling to manage a flexible workplace where nobody showed up to an important meeting.
But both situations point to the same lesson – whether you're building an audience or building a team, meaningful engagement matters far more than appearances.
When your audience becomes a digital brick wall
The first listener explains that – after launching a product on Instagram – they purchased a few thousand followers to make their account look more established.
It seemed like a shortcut to credibility. Instead, it backfired. Their audience became flooded with bots and scam accounts, while engagement dropped to almost zero.
As Anaita points out, many founders fall into the trap of thinking they need to "fake it until they make it". When you're starting from scratch, a large follower count can feel like proof that your business is gaining traction.
Tim's response was blunt: start again.
"I would rather have 1,000 people who were my exact audience than 10,000 who were not.”
Tim says that a thousand genuine followers are a thousand potential customers. They ask questions, share content, tell their friends and provide feedback. Ten thousand fake followers do none of those things.
Why starting over is sometimes the smartest move
Many business owners become emotionally attached to numbers. After investing time, money and effort into building a social media presence, deleting it can feel like admitting failure. But Tim and Anaita see it differently.
The lesson isn't that the experiment failed. The lesson is that the founder now understands what doesn't work. And rather than spending months trying to overhaul a social account with an audience full of fake accounts, the listener should focus on building a smaller community of people who genuinely care about their product.
Tim suggests resetting expectations and focusing on a much simpler milestone.
Not 10,000. Not 1,000. Aim for 100.
Then 200. Then 500.
The key is to build real connections over time. When you're speaking to real people, those numbers become far more meaningful, they become potential customers.
Finding the right people, not just more people
Anaita asks Tim: If you were giving advice about going from zero to 100 followers, what would you say?
Tim replies that figuring out who you want to talk to is the first step. While the listener's original goal was simply to grow a number, a better goal is to identify the specific people they’re trying to reach. This starts by asking:
- what do they want to know?
- how can they help them?
- what content will actually deliver value to these people?
Anaita adds another practical strategy. Instead of trying to build an audience entirely from scratch, find people who already have the community you're trying to reach. This could involve appearing on podcasts, Partnering with relevant creators, or contributing to existing communities.
In other words, borrow trust before trying to build it yourself.
The hidden cost of vanity metrics
Anaita asserts that vanity metrics don’t translate to cash, customers, or real engagement, and only really serve to boost your ego.
But Tim argues that vanity metrics still matter, just not for the reason many people think.
“They matter because they distract you. They take your time and attention away from figuring out how to get leads and conversions.”
For small businesses, the numbers that matter are usually much less glamorous.
- Leads.
- Conversions.
- Repeat customers.
- Referrals.
Those are the metrics that keep a business moving forward.
How flexible is too flexible?
The second Reality Check comes from a listener who prides themselves on giving their team flexibility. The listener scheduled a 9am strategy meeting. But when the meeting started, nobody else showed up. One employee was travelling, another forgot, and another had offered a different explanation entirely.
The founder's dilemma was simple – how do you maintain flexibility without becoming a doormat?
According to Tim, this is one of the defining leadership challenges of modern work. He says that workplaces have changed dramatically over the past decade. Many of the old rules and expectations have disappeared, replaced by greater freedom and autonomy.
While that's generally positive, it can also create uncertainty about where the boundaries actually are.
But Tim and Anaita argue that accountability and flexibility can coexist. It just takes deliberate effort.
Accountability and flexibility can coexist
Tim asserts that flexibility and accountability are not opposites – you can absolutely have both – but that solving the issue starts with understanding the context.
This wasn't a routine weekly catch-up. It was a strategy session that appears to have been important to the business. In Tim's view, that warrants individual conversations with everyone involved.
Not lectures. Conversations.
Explain why the meeting mattered and describe the behaviour you observed. Then give people an opportunity to explain what happened. Only then can you understand whether the issue was poor communication, unclear expectations or something else entirely.
Tim acknowledges that it's not a comfortable conversation, but avoiding it solves nothing. Instead, he recommends the listener needs to put on their "big-boy pants" and start asking the right questions.
The most powerful word in workplace conflict
Tim has spent the last few years researching workplace conflict while writing a new book on tension and communication.
During that research, he discovered a technique that has stuck with him.
The word is: how.
According to Tim, questions beginning with "how" encourage people to Participate in solving the problem instead of defending themselves.
For example:
- “How am I meant to do my work if people don't arrive on time?”
- “How do you think this affects the rest of the team?”
- “How should we avoid this situation in future?”
Researchers refer to this as "forced empathy" because it encourages people to consider the impact of their actions from somebody else's perspective.
Anaita adds an important caveat – the question only works if it comes from a place of genuine curiosity. The same question delivered in frustration or as an accusation will likely produce a very different result. Intent and tone matter, helping turn the conversation to one of solving a problem rather than winning an argument or proving a point.
Culture isn't something you finish
Anaita notes that Tim used to manage a team of 65 employees (see Part 1 for more info) and asks whether he has any advice on building workplace culture: “If you could give one tip for creating a culture that benefits everyone, what would it be?”
Tim replies that many leaders assume culture is created from the top down, but that this view is incomplete. While leaders certainly play a role in setting expectations and modelling behaviour, culture is ultimately shaped by how people behave every day throughout the organisation. It’s how management and employees meet in the middle. It means that culture can be strengthened by employees who buy into it, or weakened by people whose behaviour runs against it.
Most importantly, culture is never finished.
"There isn't a point where you're like, 'Done. We have a good culture'," Tim explains.
"It's a living organism."
Like any Part of a business, Tim says that culture evolves in response to its environment and requires ongoing attention to manage effectively.
Key takeaways for small business owners
The two Reality Check stories are very different, but they arrive at a similar conclusion.
1. Focus less on follower counts and more on attracting the right people
A small, engaged audience will almost always outperform a large disengaged one.
2. Flexibility works best when expectations are clear
Difficult conversations might be uncomfortable, but they are often the fastest path to better outcomes.
3. Don't confuse appearances with progress
Whether it's social media growth or workplace culture, substance beats appearance every time.
Thanks for reading Part 2
That's it for Part 2 of our Episode 4 recap.
You can read Part 1 here, and you can check out the full episodes below:
Next up in Part 3, Anaita and Tim join founders Lauren Barber and Elisha Mullins from NeedleCalm to tackle a challenge many businesses face: identifying the right target market, cutting through competing priorities and turning customer advocacy into sustainable growth.
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